title: Medical comorbidity in psychogeriatric patients.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To undertake a systematic review of articles published in the years 2008-2010 related to medical comorbidities in psychogeriatric patients. This paper addresses selected research findings on the prevalence and causes of medical comorbidity in elderly patients with psychiatric illnesses. MEDLINE, EMBASE and PsychINFO databases were used to identify potential studies. Specific medical comorbidities which were studied included osteoporosis and diabetes. Several studies investigated general medical comorbidities.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Elderly patients with psychiatric illness generally had the presence of at least one medical comorbidity compared with elderly patients without a psychiatric illness. Depression in elderly patients was the most commonly studied psychiatric illness.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Elderly patients with psychiatric illness commonly have comorbid medical conditions. The presence, appropriate investigations and management of these are often suboptimal and can affect quality of life and increase mortality.
authors.affiliation: Academic Unit for Psychiatry of Old Age, University of Melbourne, St George's Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. sloi3@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Samantha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Loi
authors.forename: Edmond
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Chiu
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D015897:Comorbidity; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015995:Prevalence